Young Czechs Flee And Join French Foreign Legion

Grey River Argus, 10 May 1948, Page 2

Young Czechs Flee And Join French Foreign Legion

(From Allan Dreyfuss, Reuter’s Correspondent, American Zond, Germany) FRANKFURT, May 3. Young Czechs, weary of two surreptitious flights from their homeland within the last ten years, are joining the French Foreign Legion from the American Zone of Germany. Others have indicated their willingness to accept a French offer of trial employment for three months in France as miners or heavy workers. In other make-shift camps throughout the American zone, former Czech students are attempting to obtain scholarships to universities in France, Scandinavia, and the United States. Many others, with British-born wives, have applied for visas to the United Kingdom. ' To all these expatriates, Germany is only a paradoxically unpleasant stage in their journey, to be endured until fate or kind opportunity allows them to seek a new life away from persecution. Refugee officials in Batavia estimate that at least 5000 Czechs have crossed the border illegally from Czechoslovakia since the Communists seized power there. General Clay. American Military Governor in Germany, has declared that the army can take no official responsibility for the newcomers. The International Refugee Organisation has said that it regards these 5000 Czechs as outside the functions for which it was established. As a result, these fugitives, possessing little more than the clothes on their backs, or contained in small suitcases or rucksacks, have temporarily been lodged in former displaced persons or prisoner of war camothroughout the zone. The camps are being generally administered by German officials selected by the German state (land) refugee ministers. Because there is no special appropriation with which to purchase food and clothing for tiie refugees, most of the Czechs are receiving an official ration of less than 1000 calories a day. . „ „ . Since the Communist ‘coup m Prague, the task of illegally crossing the Czech-American bordei' has resolved itself into a smooth-running “underground railway”. Most of the refugees make their trip on foot, guided bv German smugglers, jo whom their new occupation has become a highly lucrative form of employment. . The border crossers travel at night. Arriving at the unmarked border, the smuggler guide gives the refugees directions as to how to find the German police border station, then disappears into the woods —to fetch another "shipment” from Czechoslovakia.